


Just Hold Me

by rainbow_marbles



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gift Fic, M/M, Steve Needs a Hug, SteveTonyFest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbow_marbles/pseuds/rainbow_marbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Steve thinks of his mother, he doesn’t remember her face, the way she smiled or what she looked like in her one and only fancy dress. What he remembers is the feel of her arms wrapped around him, her fingers carding gently through his hair, the steady ‘thump, thump, thump’ of her heart as he rested his head to her chest while she held him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Hold Me

**Author's Note:**

> This is a stevetony fest gift fic for the lovely Hackle over on tumblr. It's a bit late, but beter late than never :).

When Steve thinks of his mother, he doesn’t remember her face, the way she smiled or what she looked like in her one and only fancy dress. What he remembers is the feel of her arms wrapped around him, her fingers carding gently through his hair, the steady ‘thump, thump, thump’ of her heart as he rested his head to her chest while she held him.

Steve had been a sickly child and didn’t have many friends. His mother didn’t try to keep him under house arrest to shield him from germs, encouraged him going out to play, but his many allergies and various illnesses made it hard for him to spend time outside without his eyes watering and his nose congesting, so he spent a lot of time inside. A situation like that would have probably made a lot of young boys bitter, but not Steve. Steve had his mom.

He knew she worked hard and couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time with him, but there wasn’t a day where she didn’t pick him up into her lap and run a hand through his hair as she asked about his day or watched as Steve doodled on the paper she had managed to bring him. She tucked him in every night and lay down next to him, so he could cuddle up to her as she told him a bed time story and every time she waited until his eyes were closed and his breathing evened out before she left to go sleep in her own bed.

Yes, Steve was a sickly child who didn’t have many friends and couldn’t spend much time outside playing, but his mom was always there, calming him down when he had another asthma attack or holding him and distracting him with a story when she found him standing by the window, looking out wistfully because he was too sick to go anywhere. Her physical presence made it better, made him feel safe, and everything bad that happened went away in those few moments when she was close.

\---

He tried very hard not to cry when they brought him to the orphanage, he had cried enough at his mom’s funeral already, but it wasn’t easy holding back. She was gone and there wasn’t anyone to hold him, kiss the top of his head and wipe away his tears. The nuns seemed alright and the boys they’d stuck him in a room with weren’t mean, at least not yet, but no one spared him much time, no one came to ask how he was. No one gave him as much as a pat on the back. He felt alone and abandoned and he had no idea how to deal with it.

\---

“Hey! Leave him alone!” an unfamiliar voice cut through the air. Steve didn’t know whether to feel grateful that some boy was interfering or angry that whoever it was seemed to think he needed help. Considering Steve was currently on his back, trying to fight off two larger boys who tried to steal his sketch pad, grateful was winning out.

“Oh yeah, why should we?” one of his attackers yelled back and kicked Steve in the shin for good measure, but that was the last he managed to get in before he was tackled to the floor by the newcomer. His friend abandoned holding Steve down in favor of helping out, so he was able to sit up and finally get a look at his rescuer.

The boy looked to be his age (his age if Steve wasn’t built like a twig), with dark brown hair and scruffy looking clothes like the rest of them; another orphan boy then. He was holding his own pretty well against the two bullies and it wasn’t long before the other two scampered away with their tails tucked between their legs. The new boy looked to Steve then and stepped closer, offering him a hand so he could help him up.

“Don’t worry, they won’t give you much trouble anymore,” he said as he handed him back his sketchbook that had been lying in the dirt, forgotten in the fight. A couple of pages were dirty, but Steve could still rescue most of it.

“Thanks,” he finally said to the other boy. “You didn’t have to help me, but thanks.”

“Sure I didn’t,” the other boy snorted, but didn’t comment on it further. “I haven’t seen you ‘round before, you new?” the boy asked.

“No, just don’t get out much. Allergies,” Steve answered, trying for a smile. This was usually the bit where the other person either made fun of him or just walked away.

“Oh. Well, you seem fine now, wanna go play? I’m Bucky,” the boy said and thrust his hand out for Steve to shake. Steve eyes him wearily for a moment, but then smiled and shook it. “Steve and I’d like that.”

\---

Steve and Bucky became inseparable after that and Steve, Steve was happy. Bucky wasn’t like his mom, but he still gave great hugs, even if the other boys in the orphanage made fun of him for it. He was there every time when Steve was sick and sometimes petted his hair and even though he sometimes wished Bucky would curl up to him and hold him close, he never asked for it. It was fine when his mom did it, but they were boys, it wasn’t appropriate for them to cuddle. It didn’t upset Steve though; all that mattered was that he wasn’t alone anymore.

\---

Things changed when he rescued Bucky from the HYDRA base. His friend had become more subdued and withdrawn, not as prone to physical contact anymore. Steve had tried to help, but Bucky didn't want to talk about it and he got mad every time it seemd like Steve was trying to coddle him, so Steve just let him be.

The other guys were nice, they'd become good friends since they'd joined him in this insanity, but none of them came close to Bucky. There was Peggy, but there wasn't any time to get close. Peggy wasn't the kind of gal to give her affection freely and Steve respected that, even though every time he saw her, he wished she would just sit with him and hold his hand. And maybe later on they'd retire to his quarters and he'd get to lean into her, rest his head on her shoulder while she wrapped her arms around him and they wouldn't have to think about the war, just each other.

He thought about that a lot when they had some downtime and it was a nice daydream, but he never got up the courage to make it a reality.

\---

He didn't really feel much when he crashed the plane. He knew he was doing the right thing and he wasn't scared. Once he was under water there was only the ocean, darkness and cold. He was alone again.

\---

Waking up in 2012 to find everyone he'd ever been close to was dead was even worse than when he'd lost his mother. Not only was he alone and in a new environment, he was in a completely different world.

Everything was loud and flashy and moving to fast. People spoke differently, dressed weirdly and ate things that tasted like plastic and ash to Steve.

He felt like a relic in this new world and even though he tried to move on and get up to speed with everything, most of the time he didn't even feel like crawling out of bed in the morning.

\---

The Avengers had given him something to do, something else to focus on and after the battle with the Chitauri, Stark had invited them all to live in his tower. Steve had only accepted because his appartment building had been destroyed in the attack.

He wished he could say that living with the team helped, that he'd made new friends and was feeling better about living in this new time, but he'd be lying.

They got along fine and even spent time together having lunch or dinner and watching movies, but all of them were still fairly closed off and didn't seem like they wanted anything more than a good working relationship. Natasha and Clint were their own little unit, Thor spent most of his time with Jane, Bruce seemed content in being left alone in his lab and Tony…

Steve didn’t get Tony Stark. He was loud and brash, always talking a mile a minute and throwing money around like it was nothing and he irritated Steve so much. They talked it out after the Chitauri attack (there wasn’t any actual talking. They shook hands and Steve had apologized, while Tony just waved him off and said they were ‘cool’. Steve had to take a minute to realize that it wasn’t meant to be an ice-related joke at his expense. ). So they were cool, but Tony just had this way of getting under Steve’s skin. Calling him stupid nicknames, making fun of him and just always pushing, always going right for the jugular and scratching at scabs Steve was desperately trying to forget.

Almost every word out of Tony Stark’s mouth kept saying ‘I don’t like you’, but his body language was a completely different matter. 

He was always touching Steve; when he was explaining something, he’d put a hand on Steve’s arm or back, when they sat down to watch movies together, Tony would always sit next to him and sit close enough so their thighs or legs were touching. Sometimes he’d even doze off and his head would land on Steve’s shoulder. He even did it when they argued and he was being his usual condescending asshole self and Steve, Steve just didn’t know what to do with it.

Tony Stark didn’t like him and he didn’t like Tony, so why did the other man keep touching him? And most frustrating of all, why did Steve keep letting him? He could have easily pulled away every time, but he always stayed and sometimes after a particularly bad day or long sleepless night he found himself craving the contact, going so far as to seek the other man out in the hopes that Tony would touch him, just a pat on the back, anything. He wanted to slap himself every time he caught himself doing it, but he couldn’t help himself.

\---

It all came to ahead one afternoon when Steve is trying to heat up some leftover lasagna from last night’s dinner in the microwave and kept getting the order of the buttons wrong. Tony had walked in midway of his third try and just rolled his eyes, showing him how to press the buttons again and talking very slowly, like he was explaining things to a three year old, while his hand rested on the small of Steve’s back. Steve wasn’t even listening properly, just concentrating on the feel of that hand moving along his back slightly every time Tony leaned closer to the microwave and straightened back up again and when he realized he was doing it again, something in him just snapped.

He pushed Tony’s arm away forcefully and took a few steps back, needing to create some distance between them. Tony just looked at him, his face a picture of bewilderment, like he didn’t even know what he was doing to Steve and it was just too much.

“Enough!” he exclaimed. “Enough okay? You gotta stop it with this. You just keep doing it all the time and it’s driving me crazy!”

Tony frowned, still looking confused. “I need to stop showing you how to use modern appliances to your advantage? Because I can totally do that if you want, I mean, it’s not like I care if you nuke your food properly or n--”

“No! Not that! The touching! The constant touching, Tony! You do it all the time, for no apparent reason and just—why? _Why_ do you keep doing that, you don’t even _like_ me, so why can’t you just leave me alone?!” He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face, and slumped back against the dining table. “You just keep touching and I keep wanting and—I can’t anymore Tony okay? I just can’t.”

When he looked up, Tony was still staring at him, looking a little less confused now. He seemed to be thinking something over, because soon a determined look slipped over his face and he resolutely took the few steps needed to be standing right in front of Steve.

“I’m going to do something right now and you’re not allowed to hit me for it,” he said before he wrapped his arms around Steve and pulled him into an awkward hug. They just stood there for a long moment, neither of them moving or making a sound, and after a few beats Steve relaxed into it, folding his own arms around Tony’s torso.

“I don’t know exactly what I did to make you think that I dislike you, but it’s not true. I like you plenty. I know I’m kinda rude most of the time, but ‘annoying asshole’ is just my modus operandi all the time and you’re gonna have to get used to that if we want this to work,” Tony said as he snuggled closer, burying his face into Steve’s chest, making the other man lean into him more until Steve’s head was resting on his shoulder.

“If we want what to work?” Steve asked dumbly, but arranged his limbs so they were both entwined with each other comfortably.

“This. The snuggling. Though next time we should probably do it on a couch or a bed, I hear it’s way more comfortable lying down,” Tony answered and turned his head to nuzzle at Steve’s neck.

“Oh,” Steve breathed and couldn’t suppress a shiver at the motion. “But. Tony, not that I don’t appreciate this, but why—“

“Shhh, no talking, it’s cuddle time now. We’ll talk about anything you want later, but we’re cuddling now,” Tony said and punctuated it with a light kiss to Steve’s neck.

Steve wanted to protest, but it felt wonderful to be held like this and he was helpless in the face of Tony snuggling him like a pillow. He closed his eyes and pressed his own kiss behind Tony’s ear, smiling. Tony’s embrace felt like home.


End file.
